similar to that of the lakeshore landowner: if his land is eroding, he loses ownership to 

 the State; if his land is accreting, he becomes separated from the ocean by a strip of 

 state-owned land. 



Reclamation Process 



The potentially immense value of oil beneath a landowner's property is generally 

 calculated on the basis of surface land ownership. Erosion, and subsequent transier of 

 ownership to the state, may mean significant losses in future royalty revenue^" to a 

 property owner whose land is eroding. In an effort to address this problem, the State 

 Legislature acted in 1978 to create a process by which a property owner can reclaim 

 lands lost to the state by erosion.-*^ The Louisiana Consitiution provides that: 



"The legislature shall neither alienate nor authorize the alienation 

 for the bed of a navigable water body, except for p>urposes pf 

 reclamation by the owner to recover land lost through erosion." 



(emphasis added). 



The legislature exercised the option granted to them in the Constitution and 

 provided a mechanism whereby a property owiier con earn back land he lost to erosion 

 and thereby protect potential oil revenue. The landowner must apply to the 



Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and provide them with a professional survey 

 showing the exact extent of the land claimed to be lost by erosion. DNR will review the 

 application and seek the input of the Attorney General, the Department of 

 Transportation and Development, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and any 

 other State agency or local government who jriay have an interest in the reclaimed 

 area. If all parties consent to the application, -^ the landowner will be give a two-year 

 permit to reclaim the land. The gravity of the coastal erosion problem is highlighted by 

 the fact that the statute specifically encourages coastal landowners to reclaim lands out 

 to the baseline decreed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1975 Tidelands decision. 



STATE WATER BOTTOM OWNERSHIP AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 



Although the State generally inherits a superior legal positon in relation to the 

 private landowner when erosion destroys private lands, when State lands are being 

 eroded, the state's legal position ultimately proves to be inferior to the Federal 

 Government's paramount rights. 



Relying on Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan ,-*-^ the states always assumed that the equal 

 footing doctrine applied to lands beneath the three-mile territorial sea. With the advent 

 of commercially practical offshore drilling technology in the late I940's and the 

 subsequent discovery of huge oil reserves on the Outer Continental Shelf, the states 

 looked forward to lucrative oil revenue from production in the territorial sea. This 

 scenario wa^ shattered in 1947 by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v^ 

 California .^^ That decision held that the United States maintained paramount rights in 

 the land seaward of the low water mark. The outcry from coastal states convinced 

 Congress that remedial action was necessary. A political solution was forged in 1953 

 with the passage of the Submerged Land Act.^' This act effectively reversed the 

 Supreme Court's United States v. California decision by deeding title to the seabed, for 

 the width of the territorial sea, to the adjacent coastal State. 



133 



